The House passed a massive defense policy bill on Wednesday night that includes a key provision meant to force the Pentagon to reveal more information about military strikes it’s carried out against supposed drug-trafficking boats around South America.
The bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, is a critical step in funding military operations and priorities for the next year, and it includes increases for military pay and continued funding for the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s attacks. It cleared the House with bipartisan support but still needs to pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Donald Trump.
The strikes have caused significant controversy. The Trump administration has claimed the attacks, mostly made against boats in the area around Venezuela, are about combatting drug trafficking. But these strikes have not been subject to congressional authorization or oversight, and details have emerged of apparent extrajudicial killings that could be considered war crimes.
To date, the Department of Defense, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, has refused to release all the videos it has recorded of these strikes. And the NDAA withholds a portion of Hegseth’s travel budget until the Pentagon comes clean with the information it has kept from the public.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, leaves after meeting with Adm. Mitch Bradley, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a classified briefing at the Capitol on Dec. 4
“Democrats secured significant oversight measures to counter actions taken by the Trump Administration, including fencing funding until the Secretary of Defense provides unedited videos of strikes that have occurred against designated terrorist organizations in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility as well as copies of Execute Orders,” Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
Trump has insisted that the strikes, made on his orders, are legal and necessary, saying in October, “I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, okay? We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be, like, dead.”
The $900 billion bill also declined to rename the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” a cause that Hegseth and Trump have championed in recent months. The cost of the rebrand is estimated to be $2 billion.
Conservative Republicans were able to include some provisions reflecting their ideological priorities. The bill excluded language to roll back the Trump administration’s decision to name military bases in honor of pro-slavery Confederates, and it does not protect collective bargaining rights for civilian employees of the department.
At the behest of House Speaker Mike Johnson, the bill also cut in vitro fertilization benefits for members of the military—the second year that Johnson has gutted the provision supported by many. Reflecting the Trump administration’s bigotry toward transgender people, the bill also bars transgender women from participating in women’s sports at military academies.
